Pictures of Lost Lives
by Sternenlicht
Summary: ..."And with him he took the pictures of all the lives that were lost to him forever." Hotch, about 20 years into the future, remembers his team from long ago and what has become of them. TeamCentric. One-Shot. No slash.


A/N: This is my third story for Criminal Minds – when I first started watching the show I never even thought about writing *one* story, but well, it happened, and now I'm hooked. The following piece is really an unusual one for me, as it's not about my favorite Reid, but instead it's more an introspection into Hotch's character – about 20 years in the future, I must add.

I really hope you'll like the story, please tell me what you think, and also if I've made some horrible blunders with English - it's not my first language, but I've tried.

Disclaimer: Well, what should I say? I am not married to the man in charge of CBS, so I guess I don't own Criminal Minds.

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**Pictures of Lost Lives**

It had gotten dark early this evening, much earlier than the season would lead you to expect. Though it was not yet winter, it also was not far off anymore. The yearly fall storms had already given way to the drizzly rains that would always announce the coming of the year's last months, and clouds now covered the sky almost all day. Gray and chilly, these were the words people used to describe the past week, and slowly a gloomy atmosphere had begun to penetrate the city, the buildings, their rooms and floors. Just like the leaves had first colored and then fallen, the general mood had sunk too, and the last weeks had seen people's clothes change from short skirts and bright t-shirts to somber coats, whose collars were too often turned up to hide the only possible speck of color. Yet, even the scarves were mostly black and gray, and everyone knew that summer was gone.

The fall had brought darkness, and the encroaching night was now fading the remaining leaves of green, red, and yellow – which had actually turned brownish long before – to indistinct shades of gray. On their surfaces, little drops of rainwater glistened in the light of the street lamps that flickered on just in this very minute, and Hotch turned from the window to step back out of the pale circle the lights had suddenly created in his dark room, retreating into the shadow that was not penetrated by anything from outside his office. His floor was quiet, the team at home, and somehow even the ever present murmur of the many, many agents in the building was dimmed tonight.

Almost Hotch felt as if he were entirely on his own, but naturally he was not. Gardener's people worked round the corner, Shelby occupied the rooms just below, and if he listened closely he could discern Ramon's voice that was always a little too loud coming from the floor above him. No, he certainly was not alone. His co-workers were there, just like him.

And of course, there were always the shadows.

Hotch had gotten used to them and over the years he had started to regard their presence to be as natural as his team occupying the desks below his office. Nothing unusual. Lately he had sometimes even caught himself talking to them, and only a startled realization that they were not as real as they had been many years ago had made him break off mid-sentence and resume his paperwork. 'Well,' he had thought, shrugging it off, attributing it to stress – all the while knowing that he simply refused to acknowledge that it may also have been age and the sheer amount of years that had passed since he was young and they were too.

Today, it had happened again, and he realized it would not be the last time either. While briefing his team on their latest case of a Georgian serial killer, he had found himself waiting for Morgan's voice, expecting to hear his opinion, and Anderson – who had replaced his former team-member more than nine years ago – had looked at him with pity in his eyes. And then Hotch knew that it was finally time to go home.

After he had sent the others to Atlanta, bidding them a quick goodbye that may have been called emotionless by some – after all, he would never see them again –, he had typed his resignation, not explaining why it needed to be today that he left the FBI for good. Personally, he had brought the concise letter to Section Chief Clark, who had accepted it without objection as he had seen that Hotch had made a decision not to be reversed. He simply stood, stretched out his hand, and wished him good luck, not even asking him to consider finishing the year. Clark was good at reading people – even though he was not a profiler himself – and he saw a man that needed to go. Too many years had passed to keep him. Too many friends had passed away to make him stay.

All that remained to be done was clearing his office, making room for his successor, whom he had no doubts entrusting his team to. After all, he had never thought of them as 'his team' as he had done with the others, and them he would take home with him. The shadows would accompany him, and they were certain to stand at his grave one day among the mourners just as he had done with some of them when death had chosen to pluck them from the earthly grounds. Years ago.

Yet, they had remained with him and their pictures on his desk were the family that complemented his son Jack's photograph, which would have been all alone if not for JJ, Prentiss, Garcia, Morgan, and Reid. And so, after leaving Clark's office, Hotch had returned to his own, taking out the boxes from the cabinet where he had stored them a few weeks before. Perhaps he had known that it would be time to leave soon.

But still he had not started packing right away. Instead he had wandered along the shelves, looking at all the things that had been steady companions in his life. The diploma on the wall, the tiny match-box car Jack had given him once, the flowers Haley had had sent to the office for a long gone birthday and which he had dried so painstakingly to remember the time when they had still loved each other. Nevertheless, they had caught a fine layer of dust as had all the other things, and as touching their tiny petals had left his finger covered in gray, he had given up wallowing in their presence and had retreated to the window. Staring into the gloomy afternoon, Hotch had passed the last minutes and hours, wandering the paths of the past while outside it got darker and darker.

Now, however, as the considerate administration switched on the street lamps, he was shaken out of his reverie and returned to his office, to the present in which he remembered the boxes and the pictures and the shadows. Sighing softly, and yet all purposeful, Hotch picked up the first, throwing in all the little paraphernalia that had accumulated while serving the government. This was easy and now that he had reached the decision to leave he was no longer surprised at how good it felt to be actually be able to do that. It simply had been long.

The next box would be more difficult, he knew. The pictures that were his family would occupy it, leaving their accustomed place to travel to a new home. Once more, he looked around his office, taking in all the details, seeing everything now lost in shadow and in the length of time. And as he turned back to his desk, knowing his way without having to see, he suddenly felt JJ standing right next to him, just outside of his field of vision, and was instantly comforted. Without seeing her – he had never seen the shadows and refused to call them ghosts – he smiled, certain that she had come all the way to be at his side as he prepared to retire.

Hotch felt her hovering at his shoulder as he stood in front of his desk, looking at the array of photographs assembled there. Jack was easy to pack – he was a constant presence in his life and his picture was merely that: a snapshot that did not need to replace his live son. And thus, this one was the first to be stored in the box, smiling at him from the bottom through the darkness of the empty space above.

His team was a different matter altogether. These photographs needed to serve as replacements for the people they pictured, all of them having disappeared from his life long ago and leaving a gap that was not to be filled by anyone of his new co-workers. Not all of them were dead, but all had gone, and he was the only one to remain. Faithful like a good dog, he had always scolded himself but when a chance to move on had presented itself he had declined every time. Not really had he felt the need to leave the place where they all had been one team, and over time he had grown content because he had discovered the shadows hiding in the dark corners where no one but him was looking. His family was waiting for him in the dead of the night or in the wintry dusks when everything was cold and still.

With a half-smile on his face, Hotch looked at Morgan's photograph, quietly thanking him for being there this afternoon when it had been bright and day and not dark and night, signaling him that it was time. Almost he swore he saw JJ smiling too, but as he could not quite see her, he must have been mistaken.

Letting his eyes wander from picture to picture, he wondered where to start as though it was a decision of great importance. 'Not with Morgan,' he thought, 'and not with Reid. And JJ is here with me, and Garcia'd be offended. Probably.'

So he picked up Prentiss' photograph because he had not often felt her shadow waiting and he knew she would understand. And after all, she would be next after his son, and that had to account for something. Her brown eyes stared at him, her lips curved in a soft smile Hotch had hardly ever seen on her face while he knew her. She was sitting at her desk, looking over to where Reid had always had his place, watching him intently while he performed a magic trick. Hotch had caught her unawares, and the next picture – taken only a fraction of a second later – had shown her customary serious expression, maybe slightly exasperated at being photographed by her superior. He had only kept the first, liking that it pointed to a different side of Emily – a side she knew well to hide and which had only broken through more often shortly before she transferred to Seattle, taking over the post of Unit Chief there. And though he might always call her – he still had her number, or could get it very quickly if he wanted to – he never had and had instead followed her career from a distance, even once declining a case that would have brought his new team to Seattle. He never knew why, and asking her picture had never been satisfying.

Softly sighing, Hotch touched his finger to a lock of her hair before putting the picture into the box on top of Jack's. Maybe….

Pausing a second, he decided that Garcia would be next as she had stood next to Prentiss all these years, so it was only fitting. Almost Hotch had to laugh as he picked up the photograph, anew remembering the occasion it had been taken. Morgan had snuck up on her in her tech room, bringing with him a rubber snake and a rubber spider, scaring her to death when he let the first dangle in front of her head and blocking her way out with the later. JJ had captured the moment Garcia had realized that she had been tricked and was about ready to kill Morgan barehanded. Garcia's hair – pink and blond – was untamed, her eyes wild, and yet the picture showed her just the way she was. Full of energy and always ready to bounce. Everyone had loved her, and as she had finally decided to leave the country and go see the world, no one had been there who had not experienced an immense feeling of loss. The picture had found its way on Hotch's desk, and looking at it he would always try picturing her in the deserts of Mongolia, among the elephants of Angola, or trying the exotic food of Patagonia. Every time he failed. Maybe, however, she would come back one day…

Carefully placing her photo on top of Emily's, Hotch wondered if he should take Morgan next or JJ, finally deciding that he must keep the girls together, refusing to acknowledge that he could not yet think of Morgan. So he picked up JJ's photograph, seeing her in a moment that already foreshadowed what would finally make her leave the BAU. It was a beautiful picture, full of serene calm, exasperated joy, and deep exhaustion: JJ holding her baby just after he was born, a mere two hours after Henry had made her a mother – which she would remain for the rest of her life. Five years and one child later, she had finally decided to quit her job, not wanting to miss her second baby's first steps and words as she had with her boy. It was a good reason to stop working, but Hotch and the others had been missing her every second because no one had been as good and compassionate and calm as her. And whenever he had been depressed and sad, he had looked at the photograph at his desk and had seen that there were indeed reasons for doing their job, for fighting all the evil in the world: there were mothers and innocent children who needed protection and who could not be left to withstand the darkness on their own. Still, JJ had left Quantico with her boy and girl, returning to Pennsylvania and thus leaving Hotch with a mere picture.

Thinking of his own son, who would soon become a father as well, Hotch touched little Henry's small head, reminding himself that the boy was grown now and that the mother might even have become a grandmother by now, and only this realization of the time that had passed made Hotch finally put this picture in the box, denying himself the comforting thought that neither JJ nor Henry were lost to him forever. 'Maybe I will visit them…,' crossed his mind for just a second before he turned his head to look at the remaining two photographs. The men of his team, whom he had not yet tried to think about.

Involuntarily, his glance first fixed itself on Morgan – 'probably because he is the older one,' Hotch thought. Or because his death had been a tad less cruel or a tad less shocking or just because. Always the most energetic and most physical of the team, it had been no surprise that he had run after their UnSub that particular night. Hotch remembered only too vividly that Rossi and him had not yet turned the last corner as a shot had rung out through the night, sharp and abrupt, with no answering fire. It had turned out that Morgan must have died instantly – he had already been dead by the time the two men reached him, and in the devastating days and weeks afterwards Hotch's only consolation had been the fact that Prentiss had been able to apprehend his killer only minutes afterwards.

Admittedly, though, the years had dulled the pain, and Morgan was now almost as constant a presence in his life as he had been when he was still alive. The years had thus been kind to Morgan, and he had never lost that youthful strength of his, which had also been captured in the picture. Reid had taken it during a long and exhausting stakeout that all of them had found, well, boring. Morgan, however, had been brimming with energy, waiting to get the kidnapper of an entire family, and while he was staring intently at the estate they were hiding out in front of, the picture had frozen this moment forever, immortalizing his dedication and willfulness to protect others at all costs. Even though this would cost his life a couple of years later. Maybe, Hotch thought, he was happy where he was now, having died a hero.

Giving the photograph a last long look before it disappeared in the box, Hotch admitted to himself that Morgan's death had unhinged something within him that had already started to come lose years before when Reid had had to die.

From that moment on, his team had never been the same as he had been the first and the youngest to go. Reid had not even lived to see his twenty-ninth birthday and his life had been taken in an act of cruelty and meaninglessness. All of them had suffered in the aftermath, and Hotch knew from the others that they all had been tormented by nightmares, reliving those moments time and again when their youngest had been stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, bleeding to death on the gray asphalt with no one being able to come to his help. The killer, who had long ago been executed on the electric chair, had held a little girl at knifepoint, and not even Reid's quiet and futile moans of pain had made him allow them to approach and help him. And so he had died, after more than half an hour of desperate fighting for his life, and Morgan's cries of rage had pierced the horrible night. JJ's and Garcia's tears still seemed fresh on Hotch's skin, feeling them as acutely as he had felt them all these long years ago.

He was only too glad that the only picture he had saved of Reid made him forget a little of the pain that was always immediately associated with thinking of him. Taken not five years before his death, it showed Reid in a happy and careless moment of laughter at his twenty-fourth birthday when he had not managed to blow out the fake candles the others had put on his cake. Even then, he had looked younger than his real age, the long hair accenting the pale, angular face, and yet even then Hotch had always seen that not all the traces of his concerned, insecure, and shy self had vanished in those joyful minutes when no UnSub had interfered. For some reason, he had always thought that the photo was talking to him, was so full of depth that a lifetime would not have been enough to figure out the young man depicted.

And yet, that life had been ended too soon, extinguished like a flame that had burned too brightly before it was snuffed out by a cruel blast of air. And so things had been lost and only pictures remained – pictures that served as stand-ins for people who had long disappeared from Hotch's life, never to return. The churches preached that he would see them all again, his personal convictions told him differently but maybe…

Carefully, he put Reid's picture on top of all the others, the first and last of his family that he was able to take home with him. Effortlessly, which surprised Hotch a little as he – unreasonably, he knew – had almost expected that so many lives would not let themselves be contained in such small a box, he closed the lid and lifted it off the floor with the other box. Taking a last look around his office – the place he had spent so many years and moments in – he nodded softly, content with his decision. Now he would bring his son and team home, put their pictures on his mantelpiece, and wait for the shadows to come. And come they would, he was certain, despite his apartment being light and not dark. Their time of waiting in the blackness of night was over, and in the following years they would become ever the more present, accompanying him in all the time to come.

Again Hotch nodded and closed the door, never to return. And with him he took the pictures of all the lives that were lost to him forever.

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A/N: Please review! And tell me what you've thought while reading! Thanks a lot.

Oh, by the way, I left out both Gideon and Rossi deliberately: Gideon because everyone knows that he left the team in the show itself, and Rossi because I imagine that he simply retired before Hotch did, and I also wanted to focus on Hotch's younger team members. I hope that's okay!


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